137 to go

Kate Finneren-Hessling

Published 10:52 am, Monday, April 25, 2016

UPPER THUMB  Most Thumb area residents now have electricity as only 137 customers were still without power Tuesday morning.

We have had a lot of broken poles, miles of wire down and we anticipate wrapping things up at the end of the day so those 137 customers should be back up, said Dallas Braun, operation and engineering manager for Thumb Electric Cooperative.

Braun said about 750 Thumb area customers were without power Monday morning. Thumb Electric Cooperative services 12,500 customers in Huron, Sanilac and Tuscola counties.

Braun said crews still are working on 2 miles of wire on the ground and broken poles on Lackie and Richardson Roads near Bad Axe to restore power to those who still were without power Tuesday morning.

The guys have been working round the clock and getting very little sleep making sure everyones getting their power back up, he said.

John Austerberry, DTE Energy spokesman, said all DTE customers have had their power restored.

They were restored sometime (Monday) night, he said.

Austerberry said as of Monday, roughly 200 DTE customers in Huron County were without power.

We were restoring those remaining customers throughout the day (Monday), he said. When the final restoration was made, I dont have a final time on that. Thousands of Thumb area residents lost power Thursday night and early Friday morning as a result of heavy amounts of freezing rain.

The ice and wind downed hundreds of power lines throughout the region and snapped dozens of electrical poles leaving more than 15,000 DTE Energy and Thumb Electric Cooperative customers in the dark.

Steve Considine, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told the Huron Daily Tribune on Friday that the freezing rain across Michigan Thursday and Friday fell as a result of a large storm system which moved across the Plains and into the Great Lakes region. The warmer air from the Plains combined with colder air from the east causing a significant amount of freezing rain.

Huron and Sanilac counties were the heaviest hit with freezing rain because temperatures were a little bit colder than other areas of southeast Michigan, he said.